The Slatest

Look at Old Man Justin Trudeau Still Thinking He Can Hang With the Kids

Remember when a tired and graying Barack Obama, at his last White House Correspondents’ Dinner, joked, “Somebody recently said to me, ‘Mr. President, you are so yesterday. Justin Trudeau has completely replaced you. He’s so handsome. He’s so charming. He’s the future.’ ”?

Obama’s joke came to mind Monday when Trudeau shared a photo of himself enjoying a Skype chat with New Zealand’s Prime Minister-designate Jacinda Ardern:

Ooooh, Skype. How very modern and chill to speak to face to face via the information superhighway! No stodgy voice calls for North America’s favorite liberal pinup and the cat-posting Kiwi.

Is it possible the 45-year-old Canadian prime minister is starting to feel like the old guy in the club after the election of the 37-year-old Ardern, not to mention Austria’s just-elected 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz—described by Foreign Policy as the “first millennial to run a Western country”? Trudeau probably already has to endure eye-rolling from 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron at the elderly Canadian’s attempts to use emojis at the G-20.

Trudeau may also be feeling a bit insecure since the emergence of an even younger, even woker rival on the Canadian political scene—the debonair, GQ-posing 38-year-old New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh.

But of course, time waits for no head of government. I look forward to Ardern boasting in a few years about sharing TBH messages with the new 17-year-old prime minister of Belgium.